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Build institutions, not apps

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Re: Build institutions, not apps

#41

Post by zdkl »

voz_ wrote: post #39
zdkl wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you develop your train of thought to illustrate how this comment is coherent with another you've made elsewhere: > Affordability has nothing to do with gentrification.

Yes. I appreciate you asking. Today's gentrification is caused by wealthier people moving into neighborhoods, and making them less affordable. BUT this affordability reduction is relative to the price we were at before. The price we were at before is already extremely unaffordable due to insane building restrictions and a NIMBY attitude baked into regulation. If the city allowed the building of high-rises everywhere,…

I believe I understand your opinion. In my very personal opinion you're ignoring a couple of variables:

It's probably not even possible to expand housing capacity to a significant degree in most locations it'd matters,

Even if it were, I contend the overall cost of living would go up dramatically (even in the hypothetical new high rises) due to transportation saturation and supply chain drama,

Also unless you literally double capacity everywhere what incentive do landlords (even new ones) have to moderate aggregate and individual rent growth? Since the state of the area is f'd today and demand is high, if there are any improvements demand can only go (dramatically) up.

Re: Build institutions, not apps

#42

Post by jacobush »

zdkl wrote: post #41
voz_ wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I appreciate you asking. Today's gentrification is caused by wealthier people moving into neighborhoods, and making them less affordable. BUT this affordability reduction is relative to the price we were at before. The price we were at before is already extremely unaffordable due to insane building restrictions and a NIMBY attitude baked into regulation. If the city allowed the building of high-rises everywhere,…

I believe I understand your opinion. In my very personal opinion you're ignoring a couple of variables: It's probably not even possible to expand housing capacity to a significant degree in most locations it'd matters, Even if it were, I contend the overall cost of living would go up dramatically (even in the hypothetical new high rises) due to transportation saturation and supply chain drama, Also unless you literal…

Incentives can be changed. The economy is all just conventions and pretty arbitrary rules.

Re: Build institutions, not apps

#43

Post by zdkl »

jacobush wrote: post #42
zdkl wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe I understand your opinion. In my very personal opinion you're ignoring a couple of variables: It's probably not even possible to expand housing capacity to a significant degree in most locations it'd matters, Even if it were, I contend the overall cost of living would go up dramatically (even in the hypothetical new high rises) due to transportation saturation and supply chain drama, Also unless you literal…

Incentives can be changed. The economy is all just conventions and pretty arbitrary rules.

I disagree, insofar as the term "economy" interfaces with human nature and imperatives, such as the means to secure shelter and nurishment.

Re: Build institutions, not apps

#44

Post by softwarejosh »

pbourke wrote: post #8

> The result is San Francisco, the most innovative city in a generation, proposing a Office of Emerging Technology to require any technology that uses public space, scooters for example, to get prior permission from the city That sounds totally reasonable, lest your city become clogged with broken-ass scooters after the n-th scooter startup goes on their "incredible journey" to the stars. Perhaps if you're going to l…

no offense but from someone coming from a place where oublic transportation was lobbied into non existance, that board sounds exactly like the kind of thing that becomes an umbrella and fucks up every kind of innovation. Are the scooters even a problem?

Re: Build institutions, not apps

#45

Post by josephg »

kristopolous wrote: post #34
voz_ wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have it backwards. The scooters are not, and have never been, a problem. The real problem is feces and needles. The real truth here is the SF gov is greedy, and rabidly anti-tech. I cannot wait until this whole place is gentrified and cleaned up. Have you lived in SF? Because this comment reads like an outsider looking in.

> I cannot wait until this whole place is gentrified and cleaned up The thing you are complaining about Are The Consequences of gentrification. They are the output of the process. The system you advocate for produces that which you are complaining about. It's not going to be "cleaned up". This is what that process yields. Gentrification creates more "cracks to fall through" and so more people "fall through the cracks…

I’m confused by this stance because, here in Australia gentrification seems to result in less crime and fewer homeless people out on the streets. There are no slums here in Melbourne. Or in New Zealand. Or really, any developed nation outside the US. If gentrification means the rich get richer while the poor stay poor, of course gentrification won’t help poor people. But just because that’s how it happens in the US doesn’t mean gentrification itself is to blame.

The problem, as you say, is the cracks that people can fall through. Nobody should be sleeping rough and hungry in the richest country on earth. Solve that with a social safety net, not by banning new construction.

Re: Build institutions, not apps

#46

Post by throwaway882321 »

kiwicopple wrote: post #10

I once had a relationship with someone with depression. As someone who is naturally quite happy[1], the thing that suprised me most at the start of the relationship is the amount of time she spent strategising how to be happy, rather than just getting on with being happy. In her case, it's understandable because depression is completely irrational[2] But nations do have the capacity to act rationally, so when I these…

As someone who suffers from depression due to previous drug abuse I can't even begin to imagine what you mean by just get on with being happy, I have a loving wife, good job and I guess what most people would call a happy life but I'm never more than two steps away from just opting out, I have been through therapy and various anti-depressants but they leave me feeling the emptiness even more profoundly.

My brain chemistry is irreversibly fucked for lack of a better word, a little strategising might just give me a little hope, although false, hope is better than the clear and obvious solution to my woes.

Re: Build institutions, not apps

#47

Post by kristopolous »

josephg wrote: post #45
kristopolous wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I cannot wait until this whole place is gentrified and cleaned up The thing you are complaining about Are The Consequences of gentrification. They are the output of the process. The system you advocate for produces that which you are complaining about. It's not going to be "cleaned up". This is what that process yields. Gentrification creates more "cracks to fall through" and so more people "fall through the cracks…

I’m confused by this stance because, here in Australia gentrification seems to result in less crime and fewer homeless people out on the streets. There are no slums here in Melbourne. Or in New Zealand. Or really, any developed nation outside the US. If gentrification means the rich get richer while the poor stay poor, of course gentrification won’t help poor people. But just because that’s how it happens in the US d…

Yes, now that's a matter of terminology. A holistic focus on improving the lives of everyone in the community, not by raising prices but by improving the material living conditions and reducing the stress and anxiety of economic reproduction and reducing or eliminating the precariat, that's generally not gentrification. The way Australians use "livable city" really doesn't exist in American discourse.

A market and property based approach that locks people out, allocates resources according to ability to pay or some other social status, and sees signs of inability to pay, poverty, and hardship including death, as merely personal moral failings, and the market consequences as some amoral natural system, that's gentrification. Maybe some think that's "the right way to do it" but it's also a really efficient slum creation engine.

We're set for 1/4th the world to be squatters by 2030, that's not sensationalistic, it's the reasonable expectation.

Historically this phenomena is found in immigrant or religious minority communities because they are thought to be less deserving. It's reinforcing because then they can be pointed at, in squalor, and say "see, I told you they were filthy". Racist policies lead to outcomes that differ on racial lines, duh...it was set up that way.

It's all foolish illogical nonsense that should have been tossed in the garbage in the 1700s with the other discarded superstitious rubbish. We can do better.

Re: Build institutions, not apps

#48

Post by drewcoo »

daguar wrote: post #11

I think the motivation behind this is right. In my experience many in Silicon Valley don't understand the mechanics of long-term institutional change. In part, that's simply because — much like entrepreneurship — expertise comes from practical experience. Tacit, not-easily-transferrable knowledge dominates. I find Ezra Klein's recent line here useful: "[W]hatever the recommendations, the same thing is needed: A susta…

Or it could be that in tech entrepreneurship, goals are quarterly instead of long-term, they're measured in dollars instead of happiness and welfare, and completely failing, folding, and starting anew is admired and encouraged. This approach seems incompatible with the public good.

Re: Build institutions, not apps

#49

Post by te_chris »

bsder wrote: post #2

Horseshit. Andrew Carnegie was a robber baron bastard, but it was him actually cutting checks that gave us museums and concert halls that persist to this day. The Silicon Valley "elite" like to bitch, but they want everyone else to cut the check.

Exactly! Instead of hoarding wealth and occasionally setting up a foundation to cure all disease or whatever, these people actually invested in their areas and built things. I feel like tech wealthy just doesn't get it. Or maybe it's cultural. It could be due to their wealth being incubated in the tech bubble too, and just not having any real appreciation for the culture beyond the narrow confines of the tech world. VCs on twitter would bear this out. They all think of themselves as paragons of knowledge, and then spend all day demonstrating how little they know.

Re: Build institutions, not apps

#50

Post by DominikD »

softwarejosh wrote: post #44
pbourke wrote: post #8

> The result is San Francisco, the most innovative city in a generation, proposing a Office of Emerging Technology to require any technology that uses public space, scooters for example, to get prior permission from the city That sounds totally reasonable, lest your city become clogged with broken-ass scooters after the n-th scooter startup goes on their "incredible journey" to the stars. Perhaps if you're going to l…

no offense but from someone coming from a place where oublic transportation was lobbied into non existance, that board sounds exactly like the kind of thing that becomes an umbrella and fucks up every kind of innovation. Are the scooters even a problem?

Scooters dropped at random places are a massive problem for blind people and people with mobility disabilities.
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